Finding belonging through Indigenous Women's Anti-Violence Task Force

This week’s Honouring Our Sisters gathering for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) hits close to home for Indigenous Women’s Anti-Violence Task Force member Danielle Moore. 

She still wonders what happened to her aunt, Patricia Maye Favel, who was last seen in Regina, Sask. on Sept. 30, 1984. 

Moore has never met her aunt, but she knows that Favel used to do ‘the stroll’ on 12th Avenue in downtown Regina, feeding her drug addiction through sex work on the streets. 

“The police contacted our family twice, and now it’s too late. No justice will ever be served for my auntie,” Moore told SooToday during the Honouring Our Sisters gathering. “There’s just a lot of mistrust. There needs to be policy changes, there needs to be movements in addressing how the RCMP and how the authorities handle our cases of missing Indigenous women.”

She says that mainstream media only picked up on Favel’s story about a decade ago, after being largely ignored. 

“I wonder why it’s captivated audiences when it should have been really grasped and addressed, and gone through the proper avenues to find her back in 1984,” said Moore. “Now my kookum [Cree term for grandmother] has passed, and she died not knowing where her baby is.”

Victim blaming and victim shaming

Moore says that instances of violence towards Indigenous women often go unreported for a number of reasons, and even if those crimes are reported, the blame often gets placed upon the victim. 

“A lot of our people, we come from trauma and we don’t talk about these things, and it’s very hush-hush,” she said. “When victims do come forward, we see a lot of victim blaming and a lot of victim shaming, and we don’t see a lot of accountability held in our communities [for] the perpetrators.” 

“We also don’t see a lot of services to be able to address the issues that the perpetrators have.” 

Bad math, racism and mistrust 

There’s a statistic commonly thrown around social media, claiming that Indigenous men are responsible for 70 per cent of murdered Indigenous women.

When that claim was fact-checked by The National Observer earlier this month, the media outlet concluded that not only was the statistic quoted by white nationalist Faith Goldy false, it was also grounded in racist assumptions regarding Indigenous peoples. 

The RCMP never did reveal how it arrived at that number in the first place. 

It’s instances like this that foster an air of mistrust, Moore says. 

“There’s a lot of mistrust in regards to the authorities,” she said. “Justice is not being served, and people don’t trust the police, and I don’t fully believe . . . I myself personally, I don’t speak for the task force, and I won’t speak for any other collective of women, but I do not trust the police.”

“I don’t believe that they’re conducting proper investigations.” 

That mistrust of authorities and underreporting of violence towards Indigenous women may also be attributed to victim blaming and victim shaming, which Moore says is a huge problem. 

“We see that even in the justice system - if there’s active addictions, if there’s alcohol use during an assault . . . we see a lot of victim shaming and a lot of victim blaming when stories like this break out,” she said. “Especially with my auntie Patsy. She was a sex worker - they didn’t give a [expletive] about her.” 

From victim to advocate

Moore relocated to Sault Ste. Marie from Vancouver three years ago with just three suitcases to her name, and although she has roots in Piapot First Nation and Kawacatoose First Nation in Saskatchewan, she is a member of Batchewana First Nation.

Moore says her own experiences with domestic abuse - combined with the childhood sexual abuse she suffered - has inspired her to be an advocate as part of the Indigenous Women’s Anti-Violence Task Force. 

She also wants to honour the memory of her biological grandmother, Alice Berger, who dealt with the disappearance of her daughter, Patrica Maye Favel, by becoming a contributor to the Sisters In Spirit vigils. 

“I’ve grown and I’ve evolved through this trauma, from being a victim to a survivor - to an advocate,” said Moore. “I really want to promote that there is a place of healing, and there is hope from surviving.”

“Now, I’m going to carry on my kookum’s dream - and although I can’t find my auntie Patsy, I’ve been able to network by belonging to the task force.”

Task force gaining momentum in Sault Ste. Marie

The Indigenous Women's Anti-Violence Task Force consists of a working group with a host of other women contributing to the grassroots collective. 

Members of the task force include women from Missanabie Cree First Nation, Future SSM, Algoma University, Nordik Institute, Waabinong Head Start Family Resource Centre and Nimkii-Naabkawagan Family Crisis Shelter. 

“We do this work this work not only for the women who have lost their lives at the hands to violence, or are missing, but we do this work for the women who are still here, and no one’s looking for them,” Moore said.

One of the objectives of the task force going forward, Moore says, is to eventually collect its own data and numbers, and conduct its own research. 

Just this week, Missanabie Cree First Nation was successful in obtaining funding for a future MMIWG event similar to this week’s Honouring Our Sisters gathering. 

The funding was made possible through the MMIWG national inquiry, which will see about $13 million provided out by the federal government for more than 100 MMIWG commemorative projects across Canada.    

Moore, who provides service delivery and case management as an addiction counsellor for Missanabie Cree First Nation, says that ultimately she wants to help women with trauma by creating safe spaces for them locally and being an advocate for them through her work on the task force, which she describes as a "powerhouse collective of women." 

“They say when the political becomes personal, the personal becomes political, and I commit my life to doing this work for our women,” Moore said.